TechNayak

Keyboard shortcuts are gaining in popularity on the browser. Components are getting more and more jazzier by the dozen, take the accordion widget for example , and as the gap between desktop and the web narrows, its just obvious more and more people wish to make use of keyboard shortcuts.

I found this simple wrapper javascript function that helps capturing key events across browsers. Thanks to ajaxian and the original author

document.onkeydown = function(e) {handleKeys(e)}
document.onkeypress = function(e) {handleKeys(e)}
var nonChar = false;

function handleKeys(e) {
var char;
var evt = (e) ? e : window.event; //IE reports window.event not arg
if (evt.type == “keydown”) {
char = evt.keycode;
if (char <16 || // non printables
(char> 16 && char <32) || // avoid shift
(char> 32 && char <41) || // navigation keys
char == 46) { // Delete Key (Add to these if you need)
handleNonChar(char); // function to handle non Characters
nonChar = true;
} else
nonChar = false;
} else { // This is keypress
if (nonChar) return; // Already Handled on keydown
char = (evt.charCode) ? evt.charCode : evt.keyCode;
if (char> 31 && char <256) // safari and opera
handleChar(char); //
}
if (e) // Non IE
Event.stop(evt); // Using prototype
else if (evt.keyCode == 8 ) // Catch IE backspace
evt.returnValue = false; // and stop it!
}